It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from Randy Travis, Neal McCoy, Patty Loveless, Clint Black.

By Jonny Brick

1990 Randy Travis – Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart

Hugh Prestwood wrote this four-week number one, which Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe calls ‘damn near perfect’. As ever, he is correct.

The lyric is set to a gentle groove which is driven by a bass part and snare rim shots in the verses. The chorus is supremely melodic chorus, while the middle section underscores the crisis in the song: Travis and his beloved need to either repair the house they have built, physically and metaphorically, or ‘burn it down’. All his betrayed partner needs to do is forgive him, ‘talk it out until our hearts get back in touch’.

Given that he was the guilty party, ‘led to temptation’, it jolly well should be Travis who takes the initiative to make things right; no wonder he ‘can’t go on like this’. Morgan Wallen or Jelly Roll could conceivably cover this song, given that they are also flawed humans.

1994 Neal McCoy – No Doubt About It

This ballad was the title track of McCoy’s third album and it’s one of those perfunctory ‘we go together like’ songs: he and his beloved are ‘a hammer and a nail, socks and shoes’, a coffee and a cup, a lock and a key and ‘rhythm and blues’. The arrangement is delightful, with fiddle and mandolin underscoring McCoy’s Charley Pridesque delivery, and it deserves to be rediscovered.

The lad born in Jacksonville, Texas with the government name Hubert McGaughey had Filipino heritage on his mum’s side and (can you guess?) Irish on his dad’s, giving him a striking look. He won a talent contest in 1981 and went on tour with Charley Pride, using the stage name Neal McGoy. When he signed to Atlantic, the label told him to make it McCoy and, hey presto, he started having hits.

His debut album At This Moment included Billy Vera’s Hot 100 number one of the same name, and in the 2010s he released a tribute album to Pride and made a record of his own which was produced by Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert.

1996 Patty Loveless – You Can Feel Bad

It was a good year for Matraca Berg, who wrote this song that replaced another of her copyrights at the top (Wild Angels, cut by Martina McBride), with Strawberry Wine to come at the end of the year. Coyne’s Country Universe piece compares Matraca to Taylor Swift, and this song reminds me of Picture to Burn, her own spunky kiss-off, both in terms of lyric and fiddle-assisted arrangement.

From the magnificently titled album The Trouble with the Truth, this is proper Patty stuff: ‘You can feel bad if it makes you feel better!’ she assures her ex, whose love letters and sweaters she has kept. If he’s sorry that the pair broke up, why didn’t he try harder when they were still together? In any case, Patty‘s narrator will ‘be just fine’ without him, in a manner which will have comforted thousands of her fans going through a break-up.

1998 Clint Black – Nothin but the Taillights

Five years to the day after When My Ship Comes In hit the top, Black was still enjoying number one hits. This is one of his most immediate tunes, opening on the ‘blue Kentucky highway’ but in a manner at odds with the lyric. It turns out Black is hitchhiking, ‘thumb out in the wind’, after being dumped, literally, at the side of the road.

Black wrote this with Steve Wariner, and during the pandemic the pair performed it at the Opry, in a performance to which I was briefly addicted to watching. I implore you to try not to be enchanted by the riffing in the guitars and Black’s world-class vocal performance, as he expounds on his agony on how things had gone ‘awry’, left watching ‘the gravel fly’, perhaps with his lady ‘laughing at how she brought me to my knees’. He even offers some bravado: ‘She won’t be laughin’ half as loud when she gives me back my keys!’

Chad J Country will be playing one of Jonny’s selections each week in his Wednesday show

Follow Jonny through The Nineties episode by episode.

For more country music evangelism, go to countrywol.com where you can read Monday essays, Friday reviews and Sunday Hymn Sheets. Follow Jonny’s Country Music Calendar at the Country Way of Life Facebook page (facebook.com/acountrywayoflife).

Any Given Songday and Stuck at Two, the pair of series which celebrate the centenary of the Grand Ole Opry, can be found at CountryWOL.com